Das theoretische Potential (OSP)

First Monday: Open Source — 3 October 2005

Rishab Aiyer Gosh: Cooking Pot Markets

"Linus Torvalds did not release Linux source code free of charge to the world as a lark, or because he was naive, but because it was a "natural decision within the community that [he] felt [he] wanted to be a part of" [8] Any economic logic of this community - the Internet - has to be found somewhere in that "natural decision". It is found in whatever it was that motivated Torvalds, like so many others on the Net, to act as he did and produce without direct monetary payment.

Of course, it is the motivation behind people's patterns of consumption and, what is more relevant in the case of Linux, production that forms the marrow of economics. Such motivation is usually expressed in terms of curves of supply and demand, measured by costs and prices in dollars and cents. Figuring out what motivates, leave alone measuring it, is much tougher when price tags don't exist. It is simpler to just assume that motivations only exist when prices are attached, and not attempt to find economic reason in actions motivated by things other than money; simpler, therefore, just to assume as we often do that the Internet has no economic logic at all.

This is wrong. The best portions of our lives usually do come without price tags on them; that they're the best parts imply that they have value to us, even if they don't cost money. The pricelessness here doesn't matter much, not unless you're trying to build an economic model for love, friendship and fresh air. But you don't need to be an economist to know that all of these things do involve motives, and perhaps also the matching of (ordinal) demand and supply, even if demand curves are not easily measured without price tags. Economics may not often need to be used in an environment where valuables are free, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be so used. And any economic logic of the Internet has to have come to terms with the difficulty of measuring such value."

...

"Even those who have never studied economics have an idea of its basic principles: that prices rise with scarcity and fall in a glut, that they are settled when what consumers will pay matches what producers can charge. These principles obviously work, as can be seen in day-to-day life. But that's the "real world" of things you can drop on your toe. Will they work in a knowledge economy? After all, this is where you frequently don't really know what the "thing" is that you're buying or selling, or clearly when it is that you're doing it, or, as in the case of my column, even whether you're buying - or selling. Contrary to what many doomsayers and hype-mongers suggest, it always seemed to me that the basic principles of economics would work in an economy of knowledge, information and expertise. They are, after all, not only logical on the surface but also practically proven over centuries - a powerful combination. Even if the Internet appeared to behave strangely in how it handled value, there was no reason to believe that, if it had an economic model of its own, this would contradict the economic principles that have generally worked.

However, if Paul Samuelson's textbook definition of economics as the "study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people" [12] remains as valid now as ever, almost all the terms in there need reexamination. This is because of the same peculiar economic behaviour of the Net that suggests it has developed its own model, the economic model of the information age."

...

"Unlike the markets of the "real world", where trade is denominated in some form of money, on the Net every trade of ideas and reputations is a direct, equal exchange, in forms derivative of barter. This means that not only are there two sides to every trade as far as the transaction of exchanging one thing for another goes - which also applies to trades involving money - there are also two points of view in any exchange, two conceptions of where the value lies. (In a monetary transaction, by definition, both parties see the value as fixed by the price.)

As the poster of notes on tomcats, the value of your posting something is in throwing your note into the cooking-pot of participatory discussion that is rec.pets.cats and seeing what comes out. As the author of a page on cats, what you value in exchange for your words and photographs is the visits and comments of others. On the other hand, as a participant on rec.pets.cats I value your post for its humour and what it tells me to expect when my kitten grows up; as a visitor to your Web page I learn about cats and enjoy pretty pictures.

When I buy your book about cats, it's clear that I am the consumer, you the producer. On the Net, this clear black-and-white distinction disappears; any exchange can be seen as two simultaneous transactions, with interchanging roles for producer and consumer. In one transaction, you are buying feedback to your ideas about cats; in the other, I am buying those ideas. In the "real world" this would happen in a very roundabout manner, through at least two exchanges: in one, I pay for your book in cash; in the next, you send me a cheque for my response. This does not happen very often! (The exception is in the academic world, where neither of us would get money from the Journal of Cat Studies for our contributions; instead our employers would pay us to think about cats.)

As soon as you see that every message posted and every Web site visited is an act of trade - as is the reading or publishing of a paper in an academic journal - any pretense at an inherent value of economic goods through a price-tag is lost.

In a barter exchange the value of nothing is absolute. Both parties to a barter have to provide something of value to the other; this something is not a universally or even widely accepted intermediary such as money. There can be no formal price-tags, as an evaluation must take place on the spot at the time of exchange. When you barter you are, in general, not likely to exchange your produce for another's in order to make a further exchange with that. Unlike the money you receive when you sell something - which you value only in its ability to be exchanged for yet another thing - in a barter transaction you normally yourself use, and obviously value, what you receive."

First Monday: Cyberinfrastructure June 2007

Joel West Seeking Open Infrastructure

"For open standards, open source and open innovation, the “open” part refers to collaboration by firms in producing some form of shared output. While sometimes openness is forced by buyers or regulators, today many firms voluntarily favor openness for those problems that require coordination and cooperation.

Openness can be deliberately used to attract user adopters (West, 2003), as well as others in the value network. It also can be used to align the interests of firms across the value network. Systems industries (such as in the IT sector) inherently require a value network in which the suppliers, customers, competitors and complementors collaborate to create value (West, 2006a). If anything, being open only cements these relationships as it more closely aligns the interests of the various firms in the network.

At the same time, in even the most open business ecosystem, firms will pursue their own (inherently competing) private interests (Iansiti and Levien, 2004). O’Mahony (2005) refers to this as “competing on a common platform.” Such private interests require that firms ultimately capture value.

Thus for all three forms of cooperation, openness makes it easier to create value and assure cooperation across the value network, but harder to capture value.

Open innovation is not “open” like the other two. If anything, open innovation brings a note of realism to the discussion of open standards and open source, by putting the profit motive front and center. Both open standards and open source must serve the interests of those stakeholders that provide the essential resources. If firms choose not to participate (or not participate seriously) in a standards effort, that is a signal from the market about how well they feel that effort fits with their business model. While standardization cannot be held hostage to the private interests of any one firm, SSOs have long known that a standard not endorsed by major vendors is the tree that falls in the forest — and thus incorporate such market signals into their decisions.

Conversely, open standards and open source provide existence proofs for building effective institutions that align and coordinate the interests of potential competitors. For example, the open source license provides a “credible commitment” to make it less likely that commercial interests will under–invest in specific technologies."

First Monday: Public Knowledge Project July 2007

Ajit Pyati: A critical Theory of Open Access

"As we have seen from the previous section, a shift in the economic environment of scholarly publishing has forced academic libraries to take an advocacy stance and re–define the nature of scholarly publishing. This expansion of library roles in the publication process is made possible by the transformation of the technological environment and the advancement of the Internet. Without the Internet, electronic publishing would not exist, and consequently related developments such as the open access movement and institutional repositories could not be a reality. A process is underway in which libraries are taking advantage of Internet technologies to advance an agenda imbued with their professional value of access to information.

With libraries becoming important actors in technological innovation, it thus becomes important to interrogate libraries’ relationship to technology. As discussed earlier, a neo–liberal information society environment of increasing commodification has created daunting challenges for the library profession. In addressing issues of digital copyright and scholarly publishing, libraries are in for a long, uphill struggle, but gains have certainly been made. For instance, the development of SPARC and its advocacy has brought attention to the scholarly publication crisis, and certain major corporate publishers of academic journals have reacted to this kind of pressure by widening authors’ rights and allowing the publication of articles in e–print archives (Willinsky, 2006).

I have argued in this article for critical theory as a useful construct to view emerging forms of library advocacy and activism against the encroachment of techno–capitalist logics, with the open access movement as an example. Critical theory consciously links open access advocacy in libraries to other movements which challenge restrictions on access to information. Most importantly, critical theory opens up a discursive space for libraries in the democratization of technological discourses in society. Technology, rather than being part of a determinist discourse that will lead to the “demise” or “irrelevance” of libraries, in fact can be a realm for increased democratic participation of libraries. Critical theory creates a wider space for a progressive re–envisioning of the roles of libraries in promoting enhanced and more democratic forms of information access.

Thus, libraries can be envisioned as active shapers of technology for democratic and progressive ends. In examining the roles of academic libraries in mobilizing and building partnerships with scholars to challenge the traditional scholarly publication process, we are seeing librarians injecting their values into this debate. With libraries taking a more active role in the publication of materials, we are witnessing a shift in the realm of technological expertise into the arena of libraries."

Ökonux, Texte

Brad Frederiksen: The Massive Minority

"First, I suggest that we analyze the meaning of open source philosophy. Philosophy has always been a collaborative project between thinking individuals; individuals who perceive a problem or an issue and seek to provide solutions. In that sense we can surely agree that Philosophy IS open source. The practice of philosophy is founded upon principles of engagement, critical evaluation and discourse.

Second, those of us who have access to technology can contribute our opinions and ideas freely in our blogs, in online encyclopedias and in open access journals. These are all valuable contributions for sure. But we must remember that there exists a much larger community outside of the World Wide Web. We will severely restrict our engagement with the world if we think for one moment that we can engage with it fully in this medium alone.

Having recognized that a truly open source project ought to include everyone in the process; it would seem to be incumbent upon us all to contribute our creativity and our skills in the physical realm. There are many potential ways that we might achieve such a free dissemination of knowledge, and I have little doubt that we can succeed with or without the aid of technology."

Felix Stalder, Jesse Hirsch: Open Source Intelligence

"The condensed outcome of these experiences is a realization that a sustainable, open and collaborative practice is difficult to achieve and that new specialized approaches must be developed in order to sustain the fine balance between openness and a healthy signal/noise ratio."

...

"Hierarchies are fluid and merit-based, however and whatever merit means to the peers. This also makes it difficult for established members to continue to hold onto their positions when they stop making valuable contributions. In volunteer organizations, this is often a major problem, as early contributors sometimes try to base their influence on old contributions, rather than letting the organizations change and develop."

...

"None of these principles were "invented" by the Open Source Software movement. However, they were updated to work on the Internet and fused into a coherent whole in which each principle reinforces the other in a positive manner. The conservative tendencies of peer review are counter-balanced with relatively open access to the peer group: a major difference from academia, for instance."

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"As a distinct practice, Open Source Intelligence is still quite young and faces a few challenges.

First, there is the issue of scale. Compared to traditional broadcast media, OS-INT projects are still very small (with the exception of slashdot, which has about half a million registered users) [17]. Since scale and exposure significantly affect the social dynamics, growth might not come easily for many projects.

Second, there is an issue of economics. Most OSI-INT projects are pure volunteer projects. Resources are donated. Wikipedia, for example, depends on Bomis Inc. for hardware and bandwidth. NoLogo.org is financed through royalties from book sales. Most OS-INT project have not yet produced any revenue to cover some of the inevitable costs. So far, they have quite successfully relied on donations (from sympathetic individuals, corporations or foundations), but prolonged crisis of the Internet economy does not necessarily make it easier to raise funds, which becomes more important as the projects grow in size and the infrastructure/bandwidth needs increase.

Compared to traditional production and publishing models, OS-INT projects take part to a large degree outside the traditional monetary economy. Contributors, by and large, are not motivated by immediate financial gain. However, not all resources can be secured without money, so new and creative models of financing such projects need to be found."

Henrik Ingo: Open Life. The Philosophy of Open Source

Milton Mueller: Info-Communism?

"Here we are forced to acknowledge the appropriation of communist symbols, including symbolism drawn from Marxist–Leninist and even Maoist movements of the past, sometimes ironically and sometimes not, by certain elements of the information left. Why does this happen? Because communism affords them a readily available repertoire of symbols and historical connotations. The image is one of a mass movement challenging the powerful and wealthy and overturning the economic status quo. While recognizing that this appropriation of communist symbolism apparently is irresistible to some on the informational left (Hunter’s essay fell for it hook, line and sinker), we must also acknowledge that it is troublesome and actively contested by others. What the people who reject this framing realize, perhaps more clearly than the others, is that frames and labels can become self–fulfilling prophecies. Symbols can re–shape social movements in their own image. A movement that uses images of Che Guevara as a banner is going to attract different constituencies and follow a different path than one that uses other symbols."

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"There is little doubt that the moral and political impetus that led Richard Stallman to create the Free Software Foundation was based on concepts very close to anarcho–communism. Based in a university research institute in the 1970s and early 1980s (MIT artificial intelligence labs) Stallman, like many other hackers, became acculturated to an ethic of total sharing of work product and almost complete freedom from organizational hierarchies. In the early 1980s, as the software developed in these research labs became valuable business assets, it began to be protected and enclosed in various ways; e.g., by withholding the source code from publication, binding programmers with non–disclosure agreements, and copyright protection. Stallman was deeply angered and felt excluded and “victimized” by his initial encounters with the propertization of software [6]. He also actively resisted the use of exclusive identities and passwords on computer systems. Significantly, he viewed the refusal to share code not in practical or policy terms but as a moral issue, a violation of the basic ethical command to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Stallman’s rationale, insofar as it is rooted in a sharing ethic, is truly communalist.

But the “communist” label is belied by Stallman’s strategy of institutionalization. The free software movement pioneered a new economic institution, the software licensing concept embodied by the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is based, ironically, on copyright law. It grants users the right to run, copy, redistribute, study, change, and improve the underlying source code of a program. The license is designed to prevent anyone from acquiring exclusive, proprietary rights to software developed by the F/OSS community; as Stallman puts it, “instead of a means of privatizing software, [the license] becomes a means of keeping software free.” [7] That does not, however, prevent developers from selling copies of the software for profit or from commercializing services associated with it. The economy around that software can presumably remain capitalist, though this is an ambiguity we will explore later in the paper. Also, open source software advocates would later self–consciously pioneer new methods of virtual organization and collaboration, dovetailing with anarcho–syndicalist concepts of a “gift economy” wherein the people who actually produce the product interact with each other directly avoiding managerial hierarchies (Raymond, 1999; Benkler 2006)."

...

"There is only one difference between Stallman’s definition of free software and the OSI’s definition of open source software. Free software requires reciprocity; that is, those who incorporate open source code into a derivative product must license the product as free software. Open source, on the other hand, does not require reciprocity; point 3 of the open source definition allows it but doesn’t require it. Thus open source licensed code can be incorporated into proprietary software. This seemingly small distinction has great political significance. Although both approaches are contractually based, the GPL is designed to be a one–way valve into the commons. Its intention is to cumulatively push all software into it through viral replication. Open source, on the other hand, lets users pick the license that suits them best in a more utilitarian calculation, and is agnostic about the overall economic direction of the software industry. In effect, it envisions a mixed economy, a co–existence of proprietary and open information."

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"Stallman refers repeatedly to the “the moral unacceptability of non–free software.” What is it that makes owned software morally unacceptable? The argument takes two distinct forms.

One is a simple appeal to the moral obligation to cooperate and share. Software ownership is wrong because we have a duty to let others use resources we have. “If your friend asks to make a copy [of software],” Stallman claims, “it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright.” This is a deontological claim; i.e., it holds that moral worth is an intrinsic feature of certain actions, and makes no reference to the practical consequences that the actions happen to have.

A second, clearly distinguishable aspect of the moral case for free software is that attempts to institutionalize proprietary information leads to unacceptable restrictions on the freedoms of end users. It is a “system of subjugation” and cannot be enforced without eliminating the transparency of source code and thereby impairing users’ ability to modify, copy and redistribute the program. It extends the owner’s control beyond the first sale into a set of ongoing restrictions on human action. This is a consequentialist ethical claim. It focuses more on the concrete effects of instituting proprietary software on end users and society.

Of these two prongs of thinking, I believe that the first is invalid and leads to the dead end of communism. The second is a far more important and substantive claim, but has not, I think, been consistently thought out. The clash between principled and pragmatist advocacy reflects this imperfection in the ideology. It reveals a widespread lack of clarity regarding which of these two claims is the basis for advocacy."

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"The Internet seems to be based on an unusually successful combination of private market and commons. TCP/IP internetworking is based on global, open and non–proprietary standards. The networking protocols can be freely adopted by anyone. They are published openly and can be used by anyone without paying a fee. At the same time, the Internet is a decentralized network of networks, the constituent parts of which are privately owned and administered by autonomous organizations: the private networks of households, small businesses, large enterprises and non–profit organizations as well as the (usually privately owned) public data networks, both large and small, of Internet service providers and telecommunication companies. This aspect of the Internet leads to privatization and decentralization of network operations and policies. By facilitating interoperability, Internet leads to privatization and decentralization of software applications and information content as well. At the endpoints of the Internet, the free market and privatization rule; at the core standards level, a commons is in place. The end–to–end principle has in the past ensured that commons and market complement each other. The market in applications, content and networking requires neutral coordinating mechanisms that enable interoperation. With end–to–end, the sharing and coordinating mechanisms are deliberately minimized to provide maximum scope for private initiative and innovation. There is a clear separation between the parts of the system that are subject to private initiative and control, and the parts that are subject to global coordination and non–exclusive access. In short, it is the combination of the two, private and common, that works."

Michael Goldhaber: The Value of Openness in an Attention Economy

Giliam de Valk, Brian Martin: Publicly Shared Intelligence

"Despite its shortcomings, science is an exemplar of the advantages of an open knowledge system. The keys to science’s dynamism seem to be publication of research findings and the incentive that scientists have to build on these findings, in a system of competition for peer recognition and potential application of results, with ample funding. The existence of multiple publication outlets overcomes, eventually, most problems due to review by anonymous peers. Some of the greatest perceived threats to science come from secrecy and control over knowledge linked to government and corporate vested interests.

Another important open knowledge system is open source software (Moody, 2002). The basic idea is that software is developed through a process of public peer contribution. Typically, an individual or small group writes a first draft of code for a particular purpose, which is made publicly available for comment. Anyone can point out problems or suggest modifications to improve efficiency or eliminate bugs. A core group — which might be an individual — receives these comments and decides what changes to make in the code, and also decides when the code is ready for release."

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"What a more developed system of PSI might look like.

The first and most obvious feature of such a system is that the findings of publicly shared intelligence bureaux (PSIBs) would be publicly available for scrutiny. This might include assessments of foreign political developments, economic analyses, examinations of weapons systems, assessments of trade in dangerous goods, risk analyses of technological developments, and inside reports on organisations. It would also include explanations of how intelligence is gathered, but probably not information on precisely who provided which bits of data and not necessarily who offered internal peer review of findings, namely review carried out within PSIBs.

The second feature of the system is that findings of PSIBs would be subject to external peer review. If a PSIB consistently made mistakes or failed to forecast important developments, it would lose credibility, whereas PSIBs with track records of accuracy and foresight would gain credibility. Reviewers of PSIBs could establish rating systems for clients; reviewers would themselves be open to peer review.

A third feature is that there would be many different PSIBs. Some might cover specialised areas and serve a small clientele but others would cover a range of areas for a broader audience, in competition with each other. No PSIB would have a guaranteed monopoly, thereby reducing the risk of corruption.

PSIBs might be run as commercial enterprises, as non–profits relying on grants, or as entirely volunteer operations. Independence of funding agencies is important for the credibility of PSIBs, but there are different ways to achieve this. One method is to obtain support from multiple independent funding agencies, so that the PSIB is not dependent on a single source. Others are to have an endowment or rely on public subscriptions."

Johan Söderberg Copyleft vs. Copyright

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